Give students skills they need

Cursive writing is, apparently, going the way of Saturday letter delivery, letter writing itself and the concept of Pluto as a planet - marching toward obscurity.

According to the Louisiana Department of Education, "the Common Core State Standards do not mandate the teaching of cursive handwriting. In Louisiana, districts will be empowered to make the choice to continue teaching cursive handwriting."

As a result, districts are substituting script writing with other skill-based classes, such as keyboarding.

Beginning in the school year 2014-15, all students in third through 12th grades will be required to take standardized tests on computers, and school districts that are adapting to better prepare students are to be commended.

Educators, now judged on students' performance, have a limited number of hours to bring pupils up to speed. If sacrifices must be made, cursive is the least of our worries.

Children need spelling, grammar, social and technological skills to communicate effectively and eloquently, regardless of medium.

Cursive may not be a vital part of the equation, but it will be missed.

Learning joined letters has been a rite of passage for generations, and this marks a technology-geared culture shift that leaves a pang of nostalgia.

Students no longer will trace long, loopy lines of letters and try to figure out why they need to practice, until perfect, pages and pages of curlicued z's and q's.

John Hancocks are bound to lose some flourish, and cries of, "I can't even read my own writing" will surely decrease. Furtively passed middle school notes will be startlingly legible.

There's something sad about this need for progress - we do not fail to see the need.

Fewer and fewer people write at all, and joined letters have not been essential, in the strictest sense of the word, for years, if ever. More elegant than print, maybe, but not required.

Without a cultural resurgence, cursive writing might become an archaic skill relegated to Millennials - the new "walked to school in the snow uphill both ways" chestnut to be trotted out for the children.

We are concerned less about children learning to write cursive than we are about children having the ability to read cursive writing. Many original historical documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, are written in cursive, and we'd certainly like our grandchildren to be able to read the notes we've written to them.

Picture it now: "Sure, grandma, they used to make you write all weird and loopy in school. Right. And Pluto was a planet."

The editorials in this column represent the opinions of The News-Star's editorial board, composed of President and Publisher David B. Petty, Executive Editor Kathy Spurlock and community representatives Kay Kellogg Katz, Harris Brown and Will Sutton.

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Give students skills they need

Cursive writing is, apparently, going the way of Saturday letter delivery, letter writing itself and the concept of Pluto as a planet - marching toward obscurity.According to the Louisiana Department